High-Fat Junk diet, Kids and Brain development

How high fat junk diet reduces potential of your brain to support mind? And in turn, shape you as future moron.

A high-fat diet of three days in mice leads to a reduction in the amount of glucose that reaches the brain.

High-fat-content foods throw our bodies out of kilter. Obesity and diseases such as type 2 diabetes can be the result. But what does a high-fat diet actually do to our brain? Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research in Cologne have looked into the brains of mice to understand how obesity and diabetes develop.

“A high-fat diet reduces the uptake of blood glucose into the brain in as little as three days. So the brain is starving, even though the mice are consuming a lot of calories daily. Responsible for this is the protein GLUT-1, which is the most important glucose transporter at the blood-brain barrier,” explained Alexander Jais, author of the study. Possible triggers for the reduction of the GLUT-1 transporter are free saturated fatty acids that have a toxic effect on the cells of the blood-brain barrier. The brain lacks glucose in significant areas: the hypothalamus, which controls metabolism, and the cerebral cortex, responsible for learning and memory.